Highlander Robotics dove deep into their build season at kick off on Saturday, Jan. 4, spending many hours prototyping and strategic planning in the Ross Engineering Lab at PHS. During fall, team members participated in leveled training in fabrication, electrical, mechanical, CAD design and software so everyone was ready to hit the ground running on Jan. 4 when the new 2025 game Reefscape was revealed.
Because we don’t just build robots, the “off season” is also when we focus on our outreach initiatives to support STEM in our community and beyond. You may have seen us in the Fourth of July parade with Piedmont Makers or at the Harvest Festival. Our team members mentor several younger robotics teams in the area and we regularly volunteer for Piedmont tournaments. Our work making assistive devices for Oakland Unified’s Special Education Department is also ongoing.
In November, we were thrilled to win first place in West Coast Products’ international CADathon! We also won first from OnShape for using their software to design our submission. The judges said: Team 8033’s robot, Whirlpool, blew away all our judges and stands out as one of the best designs in any CADathon so far. We were honored to become a WCP team, among many of the most prestigious teams in the world that we admire.
This year, to support our goal of encouraging girls and women in STEM, we expanded our outreach to Girl Scouts by creating two new workshops. We wanted to give them a chance to learn about robotics and engineering in a fun, hands-on way in our lab. We designed each experience to meet the requirements for engineering badges.
The first workshop, in early November for Brownies aged seven to nine, was based around building a spring bot using basic principles of physics and energy. After a short presentation, the girls got to build and test their own designs. Experimenting with different variables and recording the results is key to problem solving just as a real scientist or engineer would. The turnout was great and the scouts had a lot of fun.
The second workshop, geared for older middle school Cadette scouts, went deeper into the design process of robotics, challenging them to design and build their own catapults. They also had a brief lesson about the science behind catapults and the engineering process. Then they got to design and build their own catapults. Each group also had the opportunity to tour the robotics lab and get a closer look at our team’s robot.
Throughout our outreach activities we shared our love of engineering with the community, inspired innovation, and empowered kids in STEM. We look forward to organizing more activities like this in the future. Now back to the build season!